UB Anthropology Professor Authors Book on Texas Immigrants

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Deborah Reed-Danahay, professor of anthropology
at the University at Buffalo, has recently co-authored her second
book with Caroline B. Brettell, a professor of anthropology at
Southern Methodist University.

"Civic Engagements: The Citizenship Practices of Indian and
Vietnamese Immigrants" is the culmination of research the two began
while Reed-Danahay was teaching at the University of
Texas-Arlington.

The work focuses on the third- and fourth-largest growing
immigrant populations in Texas: Indian and Vietnamese citizens.
Reed-Danahay's research focused exclusively on Vietnamese refugees
and the issue of identity, specifically, how people learn about
their national identity -- a process very different for adults who
are emigrating from their homeland than for native-born children
who are unconsciously inculcated in their cultural norms simply by
growing up within their society.

"Civic Engagements" does not focus on the more formal
participation in political processes such as voting and campaigning
for political positions, she said. Rather, the book focuses on
informal civic engagement that occurs through houses of worship,
ethnic organizations, festivals and banquets, and other
non-governmental agencies, although Reed-Danahay recognizes that
there is a link between the formal and the informal.

"This informal civic engagement may lead to pathways to formal
civic engagement," she said.

While "Civic-Engagements" looks only at the participation in
civic activities of adults and young adults, not children,
Reed-Danahay currently is outlining a manuscript about Vietnamese
children of the diaspora who immigrated to both America and France
-- studying their memoirs, cultural products and other
representations, as well as how they represent those memories and
artifacts to outsiders.

She expects to work on that manuscript, and another, while in
residence at Magdalene College, Cambridge University, during a
sabbatical from UB. Reed-Danahay will be in residence at Cambridge
as a Yip Fellow during the school's Michaelmas term, which is the
school's first term of the academic year, and roughly corresponds
to UB's fall term.

"Adults come with civic engagement experience, albeit from their
own country," Reed-Danahay said. That was the reason she decided to
only look at adults' and young adults' civic engagement. Even
between the two groups, though, there was significant difference in
how the groups saw themselves, and how they defined words like
"citizenship" and "patriotism" -- and if those two ideas were
distinct or were inseparable.

While Reed-Danahay's worked solely with the Vietnamese, many of
whom began to arrive in the U.S. after the fall of Saigon in 1975
for political reasons, "Civic Engagements" also looks at the Indian
community -- immigrants who came to the U.S. for much different
reasons. Brettell contributed the research on the Indian community
in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The book looks at the ways in which
the two groups similarly engage, as well as ways that are unique to
each culture.

Since becoming a professor of anthropology at UB, Reed-Danahay
has presented some of her research culled from "Civic Engagements"
at the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy and at events
sponsored by Asian Studies Program.

"Civic Engagements: The Citizenship Practices of Indian and
Vietnamese Immigrants" is available from Stanford University
Press.

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